The trick is to release a free game that hooks players into buy game features to enhance their playing experience.

Trey Smith, iOS game developer, wrote “The fall of Angry Birds,” discussing why Angry Birds, for 99 cents, doesn't gross nearly as much money as many free games. The secret is IAP: In App Purchasing. Smith's successful pitch during a game? “You don't have enough coins for that, would you like to buy some?” Best example? CSR Racing announced they made $12,000,000 in one month.

Emeric Thoa of The Game Bakers gave details about costs and revenues from RPG SQUIDS on iOS in “MONEY AND THE APP STORE: A FEW FIGURES THAT MIGHT HELP AN INDIE DEVELOPER.” Squids cost $100,000 to develop, $30k to market, and grossed $75k the first month. Only 10 percent of revenue came from in app purchases, on purpose. Thoa says 80 percent of developers earn 3 percent of the revenues. 1 percent own a nice car.

Surprised me

good research and mindblowing data on the revenues earned by the free games. hats off.

We've gone right back to feeding tokens (in-game credits) because now you can distribute the equivalent of an single-game arcade cabinet -- a game that is designed to optimally take in cash at a given rate -- to every mobile device.

Since the brand launched in 2009, they’ve sold 100s of millions of items in merchandise, signed multi book, TV and movie deals, purchased an animation studio, opened a store in Helsinki and have one coming up in China

Crystal ball

I no longer aspire to make millions in one launch week but instead hope to follow your lead and develop very cross-platform games (ios, andriod, win, mac, web) that I can sell for long periods of time rather than betting the farm on a « hit ».